Christina Gold is the Dean of Behavioral and Social Sciences at El Camino College in Torrance, California. She taught U.S. history for almost twenty-five years and earned the Distinguished Faculty award at ECC. Dr. Gold also served as the President of the ECC Academic Senate and the Chair of the OAH Community College Committee.
Appearance:
Interview Types:
- Committee – Usually your first interview(s) for a posted position will be with the search committee and the committee chair. Depending on the pool of applicants and the decision process you may be called for more than one initial interview. The questions will be pre-determined and your answers will be scored.
- President and/or dean – Final interview is with the college president and/or the dean of the department. The applicants may be quizzed on issues regarding campus mission, vision and core values, so be sure to research these areas.
- There may come a time when interviews are scheduled but you will not be able to attend due to an emergency; (e.g.: having a baby, death in the family, out of town, etc.) A phone interview may be possible. You will need to get the approval of the committee chair and/or the search committee and to set up a time. During the interview you will probably be on a speaker phone and will be interviewed much the same as if you were present in person.
- President and/or dean – Final interview is with the college president and/or the dean of the department. The applicants may be quizzed on issues regarding campus mission, vision and core values, so be sure to research these areas.
Not only are you unlikely to give a job talk during a community-college interview, you may not be asked any questions about your research at all. The fact that you do research may be impressive, but it’s not part of the faculty job description at most two-year colleges. In fact, the subject matter of your scholarship might not be particularly relevant to the entry-level courses you would be assigned to teach.
This is a knowledge gap I have tried to fill over the years when I’ve been invited to speak at universities. I’ve also written twice on this topic — first a general essay on hiring at community colleges and, most recently, on the application. This time, with interview season upon us, I’d like to talk about some of the ways in which the community-college version differs from its research-university counterpart.
The teaching demo is a critical part of the interview. I wrote about the misuse of PowerPoint in demos just last fall (“The Teaching Demo: Less Power, More Point”). At research institutions, the teaching demo is usually separate from the interview and conducted in front of students (an actual class or a group invited just for that purpose). Some community colleges do it that way, too.
You probably will talk only with people on the search committee, although you may get to meet the department chair or dean.
There’s probably a continuum at work here. Some searches may indeed have a predetermined outcome (Adjunct A is going to get the job) while in other cases, committee members might lean toward certain candidates yet still be open to “new blood.” Plenty of searches — maybe even most of them — are truly wide open.